“And you put it on a chain?”
“It was already on a chain,” she said.
Sixty-Four
before
Shiloh’s mom had never married.
She worked as a waitress and then as a bartender.
She had Shiloh when she was twenty.
They lived with Shiloh’s grandmother, who left them the house when she passed.
Shiloh’s mom moved into the first-floor bedroom after that, and Shiloh stayed upstairs. Shiloh knew not to come downstairs in the morning if she could hear a man’s voice.
When Shiloh was in grade school, her mom had a boyfriend named Grant who used to take them out to dinner at Bishop’s and sometimes to the movies.
Grant was all right. He drank too much. He lasted about a year.
Most of the men came for the night and never came back. Her mom didn’t go to their houses—or at least, Shiloh didn’t guess that she did. Her mom came home every night.
She started dating Jack when Shiloh was in high school. He owned the bar at the airport. He was married.
Shiloh got the feeling that a lot of her mom’s men were married. She wondered if her father had been married. If he’d come for the night and moved on.
Her mom didn’t want Shiloh to get to know any of them. Not even Jack, and he’d stuck around for years.
The men who came into the house never got more than coffee and only came upstairs to use the bathroom.
There was a lock on Shiloh’s door, and her mom started reminding her to lock it before Shiloh could wonder why.
Sixty-Five
before
Shiloh started her maternity leave two days before the doctor planned to induce her.
She was already a week past her due date, and her back and right hip hurt too much for her to focus on work. She decided to bail out early and spend a couple days with Juniper.
Junie was three. She was happy to have Mommy home all day—but she wanted Daddy, too. “Daddy’s at work,” Shiloh said. “He’s got a show tonight.”
Ryan’s spring musical—The Wizard of Oz—had its last show that night. They’d joked that the baby was waiting for his schedule to clear.
Junie kept asking for Daddy, so Shiloh told her they could bring Ryan dinner. Shiloh called and left a message, telling him they were headed up to the high school.
They got there an hour and a half before the show. There were kids onstage doing last-minute rehearsing. Ryan was onstage with them.
He spotted Shiloh and Junie as they were coming down the aisle. “Here come the beautiful people!” he shouted, grinning. Then he sat on the edge of the stage and hopped off.
A woman standing ahead of Shiloh turned around—it was Erin, a part-time production assistant who’d been one of Ryan’s first students. She was in her twenties now. “June Bug!” she called out.
Junie ran into Erin’s arms. Ryan brought Junie to weekend rehearsals—everyone here knew her.
Ryan put a hand on Shiloh’s stomach and another on her back. He kissed her cheek. “How are you?”
“Upright,” Shiloh said, leaning into him.
